About Tropical Saltwater Fish General
Tropical fish, as the name suggests need tropical (warm) climate to survive. These could be either fresh water or salt water fishes. Usually people use the term tropical fish for freshwater fish while Tropical saltwater fishes are called marine fishes.
The Tropical saltwater fish is usually very colorful and pretty. That’s the reason why it is so much preferred by the aquarists. These fishes are shipped from all over the world. Another very popular fish of this category is the coral fishes. The coral reef is its habitat. It has very elegant patterns on its body and has stunning colors. This fish was the hero of the movie ‘Finding Nemo’ and is known by the name ‘Nemo’ rather than its original name. This is very commonly purchased by the aquarists for its beauty.
A tropical saltwater fish is more difficult to breed as compared to a freshwater fish. Most of them are bred in fish-farms. However, mostly they are caught in the wild.
The tropical fish whether salt or fresh water is plagued by a number of diseases.
These could be as follows:
Discoloring of the skin
White spotting
Reduction in taking feeds
Bacterial infections leading to bloating of the body.
Chlorine in the water can cause appearance of a white film over the eyes which are called Eye fluke.
Heavy metal poisoning
Nitrate poisoning.
Ammonia poisoning
They can also get infected with gill worms. You can detect this by looking at the worms hanging out of their gills.
So, when you decide to set up a tropical saltwater fish aquarium ensure that the fish is rid of the diseases mentioned above. Besides this there are some more aspects to be studied. As tropical fishes need warm temperatures to survive you need to ensure that a certain level is maintained all the time? Sudden fluctuation of temperature is harmful for them. Another factor to remember is that salt water absorbs less oxygen. Hence, a tropical marine aquarium needs to have larger surface area to enable the gases to exchange.
Saltwater aquariums should not have a metal lining. This is because the salt in water will cause erosion of the material. Hence, the lining or canopy should be of plastic or acrylic. The size of the tropical saltwater fish aquarium is also very important. A medium size fish of this category would generally require 38 sq inch of area. Keeping the right size and type of filter in the aquarium is another important aspect. If you are only going to keep fish and nothing else like coral etc. then you could use either hang on type or canister filter.
